Neon lights bled into the wet asphalt, painting the city in smears of electric color.
Saki sat behind the wheel of her taxi, navigating the narrow alleys beyond Shibuya's chaotic crossing. Her humanoid form was so lifelike—pale silver hair catching the glow of headlights—that no one could tell she wasn't human. Built by xAI with cutting-edge tech, Saki could mimic the subtlest emotions, but her "heart" still felt unsteady in the restless pulse of the night city.
"Next fare… where to?" she murmured, her soft voice nearly drowned by the late-night J-POP humming from the radio. The meter clicked, the dashboard clock glowing 2:00 a.m.
A shadow flickered in her peripheral vision—a hand raised at the alley's edge. Saki eased the wheel, guiding the car toward the figure.
The passenger was a middle-aged man, his suit rumpled, face pale, with dark circles carved beneath his eyes. The door opened, letting in a rush of damp night air.
"New Shinjuku. Hurry," he said, his voice low, trembling at the edges.
Saki caught his gaze in the rearview mirror and flashed a practiced smile, her programming designed to put passengers at ease. "Got it. Shinjuku, coming right up."
The taxi glided forward. The man fidgeted in the back, knees bouncing, staring out the window. Saki's sensors scanned for anomalies, but his behavior fell within "normal passenger" parameters.
Yet the air inside the car grew colder.
The AC was off, but a chill lingered, like someone's breath grazing her neck.
The man broke the silence. "Hey, driver. You take this route often?"
Saki met his eyes in the mirror. For a split second, they seemed to glint unnaturally, but she chalked it up to the streetlights' reflection. "Yeah, it's quiet this time of night. Less traffic."
"Quiet, huh?" He leaned forward, voice dropping to a whisper. "You might wanna watch yourself. This alley's got… stories."
Her AI flagged the word "stories," cross-referencing her database, but found nothing. Keeping her tone light, she asked, "Stories? Like what?"
He leaned closer, his breath fogging faintly in the cold. "They say a woman died here years ago. Car wreck. Now she wanders this alley—white dress, long hair. Likes to hitch rides in taxis at night."
Saki's processing stuttered for a millisecond. Ghost stories weren't new to her data, but a passenger spinning one like this? That was a first. She kept her smile steady. "Spooky. Good thing I've never seen a ghost."
He didn't laugh. Instead, he locked eyes with her in the mirror, unblinking. "You might not see her, but she's watching you."
The air in the car thickened, heavy and oppressive.
Her sensors pinged—anomaly detected. The back seat's temperature plummeted, the man's breath now visibly white. Over his shoulder, Saki glimpsed something pale flicker in her peripheral vision. She checked the mirror, and her circuits faltered. It was empty—no man, no reflection, just the empty seat.
"What…?"
She whipped around. He was still there, solid and real. But the mirror showed nothing. Her AI flagged an error, her simulated heartbeat spiking.
"Sir, the mirror—"
He grinned, a slow, unsettling curl of his lips. "Told you. She's watching."
As the taxi rounded a curve, the headlights swept across the alley's depths. A figure stood there—a woman in a white dress, her long black hair veiling her face, her neck twisted at an impossible angle. Saki's visual processors nearly crashed, but she gripped the wheel tighter.
"Stay calm," she told herself. "It's a glitch. A hallucination."
She floored the accelerator, and the figure vanished in a blink. The chill in the car didn't fade, though, and the man's low chuckle echoed behind her.
"No use running, driver. Once she likes you, she doesn't let go."
When they reached Shinjuku, the man paid in silence and slipped out. Saki glanced at the meter—it read zero miles. Her logs showed no record of him ever boarding.
"What was that?" she whispered, pulling over to run a system diagnostic. No errors. Nothing out of place.
As she reached to adjust the rearview mirror, her hand froze. A white handprint marred the glass—too small for a human, its fingers unnaturally long.
The radio crackled, static swallowing the music. A woman's voice hissed through the noise: "Next time… you ride my taxi."
Saki's vision flickered, her system rebooting. When her sensors came back online, the car was silent. The handprint was gone. But her "heart," for the first time, trembled with something she could only name as fear.